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Vibrations and sounds may have enhanced worship of Great Goddess Cybele

In a mountain valley in Serbia around 300 AD, Romans built a palace complex to honor the Emperor Gaius Valerius Galerius Maximianus, who was born in the area. In this palace, called Felix Romuliana, was a temple to the great nature goddess Cybele that was oriented differently than other Roman palaces. Researchers testing acoustics think the designers arranged Cybele’s temple, where bloody animal sacrifices were performed, to take advantage of the mesmerizing sound and vibrations of water rushing underground nearby.

Cybele, earth goddess, surrounded by lions, fruit and general abundance, a flying putto carries a model of a building on his head. Engraving by M. Küssel after S. Vouet. ( Wikimedia Commons )

Using what they call archaeoacoustics and electromagnetic sensors, researchers from the SB Research Group determined Cybele’s temple was oriented to follow the direction of vibrations and very low-frequency sound emanating, they think, from the water flow. In a paper titled ‘Archaeoacoustic analysis of Cybele’s temple, Imperial Roman Palace of Felix Romuliana, Serbia’, the researchers report that the designers of the temple took advantage of the sounds and vibrations to influence human brain waves and enhance the psyche.

A detail of the 1505 AD statue by Andrea Mantegna depicting the introduction of the worship of Cybele to the Romans in 204 AD. ( Wikimedia Commons )

The sounds are below the range of human hearing, in the 18 to 20 Hertz range. The researchers think Galerius’ mother, Romula, who lived at the palace until her death, used seers called augurs to dowse the location of the water, then built the temple near the source. The sounds could be felt on organs on the skin, the researchers said.

They wrote that sounds can have an awe- or fear-inspiring effect and these frequencies could have affected the psyche of worshipers, “like standing in the belly of Mother Earth. Creating an atmosphere of excitement, while immersed in the darkness of the womb of the Great Mother, or rather inside the fossa sanguinis. ” The fossa sanguinis was the pit where the blood of sacrificed animals was poured on worshipers.

The researchers, Paolo Debertolis of the University of Trieste; and Maja Zivić, curator of the Roman Palace Felix Romuliana, write:

“This temple and its fixtures are the only place within the palace that is not oriented along the east-west axis of the complex as was the Roman tradition (Decumanus). Historians also made reference to mysterious rituals, so we used archaeoacoustical methods to better understand why this might be. These frequencies would have increased the effect of rituals by enhancing the psyche of the participants due to the influence of these low vibrations on human brain waves. This suggests the builders of this temple had some sort of knowledge of this effect.

... Our archaeoacoustic experience has shown that natural phenomena (ultrasound, infrasound, low-frequency sounds) can create a direct effect on the human mind without people necessarily understanding the reasons why they experience a particular emotional state in that place.

Galerius and Romula are buried near the palace on a sacred hill that had been a burial ground from about 1,500 BC. The rites of apotheosis by which the Romans believed the two ascended to godhood were performed at Magura Hill, the site of a Bronze Age people’s necropolis (city of the dead).

Galerius was declared God on Magura after his death. He was honoured in a temple in one part of Romuliana as a god and his mother as a goddess in a temple in another part of Romuliana.

The two rounded burial mounds of Roman Emperor Gaius Galerius and his mother, Romula, on top of Magura Hill in what is now Serbia. There is a burial ground of Bronze Age people dating back to 3500 BC at the hill. ( SB Research Group photo )

Galerius, the authors say, was rarely at the palace, but Romula was there a lot. Felix Romuliana was named after her. She worshipped non-Roman Gods of the Mountain and performed sacrifices and rites at the temple of Cybele.

“But who were these ancient Gods?” the authors ask. “Lucius Cæcilius Firmianus Lactantius, Roman historian of the time, only speaks about mysterious and harmful rituals by Romula and her acolytes.”

Cybele was a nature goddess and the great Phrygian Mother of the Gods. Her adherents worshiped her with orgiastic rites. The Greeks, who influenced the Romans, identified her with their own Mother Goddess, Rhea. Her cult was introduced to Rome in the third century AD.

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Mark Miller

Mark is a Writer for Ancient-Origins He has a bachelor of arts in journalism and is a former newspaper and magazine writer and copy editor who s long been interested in anthropology mythology and ancient history His hobbies are writing... Read More

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